Road to legalizing marijuana has potholes

In the next legislative session, there will be a bill to approve crude smoked or eaten marijuana as a ''medicine.'' It's important to set the record straight. Marijuana legalization advocates would have you believe that smoking marijuana is the only alternative for cancer sufferers who have pain or the nausea associated with chemotherapy. However, numerous safe and effective medications and treatments are available to ease suffering.

The anecdotal reports regarding marijuana as a medicine are not reliable scientific evidence because the claimed benefits were not independently verified and do not reflect double-blind controls. They may also be inaccurate due to the emotional expectancy of the person using marijuana and the placebo effect.

There are no established doses for smoked marijuana. It's unclear how it interacts with other drugs or medical conditions. There is much evidence that smoking marijuana harms sick people.

''Medical'' marijuana is often sold in packages that look like candy. Citizens have grown tired of the crime, noise and abuse that marijuana dispensaries bring to their neighborhoods.

The initiative ignores the Food and Drug Administration medicine approval process that has protected us for 100 years. It is dangerous to approve anything as medicine without going through the FDA process of scientific inquiry and study.

We strive to be a compassionate society, but there must be a balance between managing illness and creating a system that does more harm than good. The road that the ''medical'' marijuana legislation is traveling is laden with potholes.